Using the new Text Widget

If you signed up with Yola prior to 2014, you will have access to both the new and old Text widget. The new Text widget is slicker and has simpler functions to format your text on your site. When you pair the new Text widget with the Style Designer, this unleashes a whole wealth of customizable options for your site. However, if you still wish to use the old Text widget, this is still possible.  The new and old Text widget which is labeled Text (old) which can be found by going to Widgets and selecting Popular from the drop-down menu.

For this tutorial, we will focus on the new Text widget and how it works. 

Accessing the Text widget

To use the Text widget:
  1. Open the site in the Sitebuilder.
  2. Go to Widgets.
  3. Select Popular from the drop-down menu.
  4. Drag and drop a Text widget onto your page where you would like to add the text.
  5. The Text widget will open up and you can type or paste text into the text area.
The most important feature of the Text widget is the Text Editing Toolbar.  It appears at the top of the page when the cursor is inside the Text widget and looks similar to a toolbar that you might find on a Word Processing program, for example, Microsoft Word.  When you hover the cursor over any of the icons, the descriptive name of the icon appears below it to give you a hint of what it does when you click on it.

 

Using the features of the Text Editing Toolbar:

 
User-added image Undo / Redo
You can undo any text that you have added to the Text widget.  For example, if you have deleted text that you want to re-add, then use the left-pointing arrow.
 
If you decide that something you’ve undone should be reversed, use the right-pointing arrow.  The “Redo” button adds back any text that had just been deleted.
 
These two arrows are an easy way to quickly remove or re-add any text quickly.
User-added image Make text bold
Highlight the text that you want to make bold and click on the B.  The highlighted text will become bold.
 
User-added image Italicize text
Italicize any text that is highlighted when you click on this icon.
 
User-added image Add links to text
Links in text are a great way to enhance the usability of the information on your site and makes it interactive for your web visitors.  More importantly, links help make your site more visible to search engines and will greatly improve your site’s SEO, if used correctly.  There are many articles on the web that will give you information about how to use links effectively and legitimately on your site which you may want to research in more detail.

To add links, highlight the text and click on the link icon.  This will open up the Link Editor and allow you to add a link in a number of ways.  Take a look at this tutorial for specific details about adding links : I want to add links to other sites, how do I do that?
 
User-added image Text alignment
The options to align the text on your site are LeftCenter or Right.  Each alignment option has it's own icon.  If you want to change the text's alignment, highlight it and click on the icons.  You will see the text adjust to the new alignment you have chosen.
 
User-added image Format paragraph text

The formatting is set up in the Style Designer.  Take a look at The Style Designer tutorial for steps on how to format the fonts and text styles.
 
To change the formatting of a paragraph of text, place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph.  When you click on the “Paragraph” button in the Text Editing Toolbar, you have the following options in the drop-down list:
  • Paragraph” is the default setting.  It takes the default text from the Style Designer’s paragraph settings.  You can use this option when you have changed the paragraph to one of the other settings and want to change it back to the normal text.
  • The other options, Heading 2 to Heading 6, change the paragraph’s font to the settings that were set up in the Style Designer.  See the link above to see how to set up the Heading fonts.
User-added image Format a Blockquote

The Blockquote icon is shown as an inverted double comma.  Block quotes are used when quoting a specific piece of text and make the paragraph stand out.  You can read more about it’s usage here: Block quotation.
 
To use the Blockquote, place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph and click on the icon in the Text Editing Toolbar.  You will notice the following changes to the text:
  • The paragraph indents automatically to the right
  • There is a vertical line to the left of the text.  
  • The text becomes italicized.
This tells your reader that the paragraph is a quotation.
 
User-added image Add a bulleted list of items
The bulleted list feature allows you to create a list of text with bullet points.  To use it, highlight text and click on the link.  This will add a bullet in front of the selected text and indent it.

To remove the bullet, place the cursor anywhere in the text on the bullet item and click on the Bulleted List icon again.

Placing the cursor at the end of a sentence that is part of a bullet point, will make the next sentence a new bullet point.
 
User-added image Add a numbered list
The numbered list - allows you to create a list of numbered items.  It functions in the same way as the Bulleted List (above), except that numbers will be displayed at the beginning of each point.
 
User-added image Indenting and Outdenting text

Indenting allows you to shift a paragraph of text so that it is not left aligned with the rest of the text on the page.
 
Outdenting moves an indented paragraph back to the original position before it was indented.
 
User-added image Adding a Picture

You can add a picture inside a Text widget if you want it to form part of the text instead of using a Picture widget.  For more options for adding pictures to your site, please see the How do I add pictures to my site? tutorial.
 
User-added image Wrapping text around the picture
You can wrap the text around the picture. Please see Wrapping Text with Pictures for steps on how to use this feature.
 
User-added image
Removing Text Formatting
 

To remove the text formatting, click on the slanted Tx icon.
 
User-added image Formatting and styling the text

This feature allows you to style the text, fonts, and layout of the site in the Style Designer.  See the Style Designer tutorial for specific details on using this feature.
 

 

Pasting text into the Text Widget

The new Text widget allows you to paste text from anywhere, into your site.  It will strip out any formatting from other sources, allowing you to use the Text Editing Toolbar in the Text widget, as well as the Style Designer, to format your text.
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